today. if these are the images. from the streets of canada. in india ots available in the move go on to join the hotel rooms. the gateway her to the ground imperial truly the taj west coast. to coast leisure hotel sit don't need to go and. read this and the colonel was a hotel retreat. and

broadcasting live direct from the heart of moscow this is our tease for the glad that you with us let's take a look at your headlines thousands of demonstrators remain outside the greek parliament as the government gives its final approval to hard hitting spending cuts and tax hikes and ratification secures an e.u. bailout but that's been met with weeks of protests and rioting that's left more than three hundred injured. anger at budget cuts has also flared in the u.k. as a one day public sector strike closes twelve thousand schools in england and wales workers walked out over pay and pensions hitting job centers and passport offices as well as border controls and an even handed and diplomatic approach russia calls on the un to carefully consider its handling of syria foreign minister sergey lavrov pointed out the un's hard line on damascus while it allowed

a civil war to rage in yemen this comes as lavrov strongly criticized france for reportedly dropping on just the libyan rebels saying if the claims are true they represent a clear breach of the u.n. resolution. parties debate or show crosstalk is up next in this edition peter lavelle asks his guests if the west led military intervention in libya getting drawn deeper and deeper into northern african quicksand stay with us. we'll. bring you the latest in science and technology from around russia. we've got the future covered. you.

know you know welcome to cross talk i'm peter lavelle quagmire and standoff in libya is there a military solution to the conflict in libya and a stable democratic and whole libya be created through the use of force to museum change and is there still a realistic possibility of a political solution. to. the process of the ongoing conflict in libya i'm joined by jim brann in london he's the spokesperson for the stop the war coalition also in london we have and is al gore marty he is a libyan political analyst and in los angeles we cross to omar tora b. he is a political analyst and a founding member of the libyan human rights commission all right gentlemen this is crosstalk that means crosstalk rules in effect and that means you can jump any time you want and i always start this program with the person that had to get up early as far as i'm going to go to you omar in los angeles is there

a political solution to the conflict ongoing conflict now in libya because we see why mainstream media says that's not a possibility though we hear it here european officials saying there is there should be a possibility of a political solution and we have the the international criminal court saying that he his son and a security chief should be indicted for war crimes and that kind of says you shouldn't talk to people like that so i asked my question again is there a political solution to the ongoing conflict quagmire standoff in libya. peter thank you so much for having me on. it depends on your definition of what a political solution is. quite simply if he and his family leave libya we want to have any war we want to have any bloodshed we want to have any killings going on and the libyans will go about their. construction of

their democracy and i want to refer your audience to a report that just came out yesterday by the national democratic institute you can find that on my website omar turby dot org and which actually spells out what the transition period would be and how it would take place to answer your question really yes there is a political solution and if he leaves then his kids then we can actually begin to. omar omar there's a moment i can interrupt there's no indication they're going to leave ok so i mean to stop the bloodshed maybe there should be talks and i'd like to turn that question to jim i mean the question man can there be a political solution because the current regime shows no interest in leaving the scene it will continue to fight and after the indictments from the international criminal court it looks like they will continue to fight because there is no way out now for those people what do you think. yes i mean i think i think the quagmire

will only get worse you cannot present i think you cannot present the interest of nato as being the interest of the libyan people nato and the nato powers have converted the libyan civil war into something else and that will roll on and i know the fact for example that today the african union summit convenes in. in equitorial guinea and we know that gaddafi won't be there but the question one question might be will shear of sudan be because remember that there was a into nobody has ever been indicted by the international criminal court except somebody from africa and the most the highest ranking one is the president of sudan and the african countries are cocking a snoeck at this international criminal court because it is seen to be simply a tool of the western powers and that will roll on so the credibility of it for example will be shot and the fact that william hague gets up when the international criminal court issued this indictment two days ago and says this only proves our

point remember that the statute of the international criminal court is entirely skewed the supreme international crime as it's defined is the crime of aggression and it was the foreign office legal advisor here in london who to a man and woman said that the iraq war was a crime of aggression and that simply being left out of the statute otherwise tony what i would be on trial in london for example or in the hague or wherever so it's very much seen as askew there is your mischaracterizations here as there are right i don't know more let me respond here and let me go to first and then we'll discuss that here because i just like by to maybe go a little bit further with what jim had to say here it seems to me now that meet when nato decides it wants to use military force against a country it uses the international criminal court to is a political tool we now it's really turning into last year in service of warfare what do you think about that. well. i'm not sure. if you mean.

the because of the fact that tony blair and george bush weren't voted for war crimes. you know by extension get there shouldn't because a feel of whether or not these people are in both of them it's the case that the crimes warrant. such a. verdict being put upon and it's a very very strong very very strong statement to the rest of the dictators in the world that if you do follow such vicious and such horrible crimes against your people that you won't be given or. as easily as you think you may that's not this that the fact that tony blair and george bush should be should be investigated for their crimes in iraq but it doesn't mean by extension you know that the arab dictators of the world to get away with such heinous crimes ok omar you want to jump in there i mean it is she it seems kind of i did you know you should be

indicted for war crimes if you kill other people not your own people but if you kill your own people you should be indicted it seems kind of skewed in itself omar go ahead. what i'm trying to say there is no civil war going on in libya we're not talking to war factions with equal amount of weapons the libyan regime decided to kill its own people with its own military machine. innocent civilians that's one too i think bernard. from london is saying there are no people that have been indicted outside of africa the balkan states we have at least one or two people there were indicted and. you know you. know you're going to jam i said the international i said the international criminal court which began operations in two thousand and two specifically the international criminal court has now indicted five sets of people all of them from africa and nobody else that's

just a factual correction ok but all my i mean you're saying this isn't a civil war then what is it because i guess the obama administration isn't call it a war either it likes to use the term kinetic military action is i would you would call it is well what is kinetic military action. you know i haven't heard the term later i know that i don't wince to be honest with you but it's really imagine what it was or was it was it defined it as it is. yeah go ahead but i think i think we're looking we're looking at a very different perspective i mean you can call it a civil war if you'd like to but i think. you're almost equating it to to moral equivalence to morally equal solids which will follow and ignore the fact that there is a revolution occurring in libya and it was being suppressed with the most violent means or you know. missiles and bullets were fired at civilians and so if you want to call it a civil war feel free to but that ignores the fact on the ground which is that the

in his personal army i were talking a civilian population i don't think in the history. as a civil war you know i feel free to call it what you like ok jim if i can go to you why should nato be in the business of forcefully changing regime presumably to bring democracy and one has to wonder if it's good to keep the country together is one sovereign state i mean why is that nato mission now. well i think in a way i was pretty finger on it although i think in the wrong way the fact that libya has been singled out in this way the fact that for example afi has been indicted in the fastest process ever indulged in by the international criminal court unprecedented speed whereas no other arab leader and i would single out in this particular context for example the king of bahrain has not been singled out. but not nor has any other head of anyone or any other arab. i mean i'm told that

the banker is you think it's you're ignoring the very annoying the fact the good there for you is is the completely different type of force to suppress and wolf we were facing the same force in libya as the barneys you were for the libyan people not asking for international intervention but when the scenario. the reality in the fundamentals and the details of the growth were completely different it was an armed conflict where the civilians are on and the army is all in it calls for intervention it's not the case and by her own please do not try to intervene when and it is a very good thing to do you know and if i could stay with what i did say with you and it's real quickly i mean i don't think anybody on this program is wants to justify anything that mr gadhafi has done or not done i don't see that happening here on this program however the indictment does seem to be if not moral morally allow the continued bombing of libya and i think that's the point that jim is getting at here. well i think well you know that moment when you can you explain to

me you had nothing to do with each other ok i'm sorry i didn't go first and i said no we're going to jim go ahead and the bulling of our country i mean you'd be hard pushed before many many libyans are complaining of of targets being bombed i mean not bombing anything that you know the libyans themself wouldn't want to go on but bombing joe use facilities then or bombing for the most part and i don't know for in the interest that i would accept and there have been cases where a few civilians have thought it and subsequent to the civilians dying but oh well and to tie in for a very minute the fact that it's the intention behind that as intervention to try to kill civilians that is beyond the fact that it is not for is not for this for me to entertain or debate so far in that bombing the country almost assumes that we're trying to bomb civilians there that's not the case it's not the case it's been a success ok all mario mario you think i referred to you is jim i would go more go ahead you had a point go ahead. well i'm saying is and diving. is . not has no relationship to nato is increasing its bombing or the start of the

bombing or ending the bombing you know it's the guy committed crimes against the populace civilians and he deserves he pain is crimes from rape of women to bring in mercenaries from outside the country and killing people so this is this is the truth of the matter and he can you know he conducted himself in this fashion and he deserves to be tried as a matter of fact i would really rather see him tried inside libya and this man this isn't a february seventeenth revolution on are not the only crimes that get that he committed he's been committing crimes in libya since nineteen seventy three i mean there's thousands and thousands of people were killed and towards heard a lot of them are only going to have to jump in here gentlemen we're going to go to a short break and after that short break we'll continue our discussion on libya stay with r.t.

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with max keiser for a no holds barred look at the global financial headlines tune into kinds a report on r.g.p. . and. welcome back to cross talk i'm peter lavelle to remind you we're talking about regime change in libya. and you can. see. ok jim i'd like to go to you in london me we just heard omar mentioning about rapes and other heinous crimes being committed in libya right now but you know i looked at wayne mainstream media and you see those reports but then i checked amnesty international human rights watch and they have not been able to determine any credible witnesses to mass rapes in qadhafi's libya now there

seems to be a very big skewing of lines here between what mainstream media western governments and what reputable human rights groups have to say about what's happening in libya how do you explain that. i think the thing is very simple you cannot possibly take the question of libya or what happens in libya outside of the context of the nato powers interest geopolitical interest it makes no sense whatsoever i think the starting point of any discussion should remain what was agreed in the first half of the twentieth century and it should stay there the fact that they are shifting the position the fact that they are tearing up agreements in the first half of the twentieth century makes no difference if you abandon that as your starting point then i think you fall into the swamp and that it's the very same swamp that was established in the first half of the twentieth century which arrived at the conclusion that you could not use humanitarian pretext for the intervention for the use of force on the world scale that was the issue that was what was agreed in the

late one nine hundred forty s. and i think i think that nothing of that has changed and richard is. no no no you're right this is ait's. if you have the answer call no peter if you allow me peter if you are i know you are going to be actually and i couldn't distinguish you saying one guy had you know what i had on or i'm quite disturbed to hear people i mean you're referring to. human rights watch or amnesty international or whatever reporting agencies as far as rape in libya. there has been definite definite rapes in libya of at least three hundred fifty reported cases i was just in libya for three and a half weeks i've seen people in tears families. and in such bad emotional condition because either the daughters were raped specifically the order of skin directly from god and yes the way they know you are

omar that i'm not dismissing it is true or not true but you know media reports and a lot of media coverage of the arab awakening has been very skewed for very different reasons here and we have plenty of people is also going to you don't want to justify nato's aggression is well i mean and this if i can go to you i don't see any kind of surprise me go to you i mean do you want to see a libya that is created by nato through aggression through war is designed not to use it with that how do you sit with that what do you want to do the only good thing that we're going to resume their once look and what employ you mean first and foremost the aggression there's no end to the people the people themselves i mean we have to come also at the heart of. the new season the other question we have higher morals and values but what about international law what about international law. well international insolvency to hell with sovereignty being right the more land. well and the thing for

a minute these bizarre or all ideological storms which come at the expense of people when we talk about sort of attributes because because the three has the. kind of you know. mechanic kind of a you know moron if you want to call it because i'm going to want to kind of start in libya when i care about what he thinks of sovereignty i see more people being raped us than what we were murdered or we're into playing international law saying sovereignty solvency when we women and children are being murdered and if we followed the logical conclusion of the line of argument of someone like jim will be mourning hundreds of thousands of civilian deaths in libya and they want to trust with us that it would be different has no idea of his track record or his intentions and doesn't you know for me they're walking on a very very morally dubious ground here but i was with us that but if we go into a second point and the second point is that if we feel that nato later has aggression as we're going to roll call it is that is the defining factor in libya where taken into account something that you know it's completely besides the fact the fact is is that libyans here are the equal power brokers they're the ones that

are fighting on the ground the other ones are risking their lives they're the ones and molding this country in a vision that they want to and i think we have this here is as europeans as people of the world who have gone into the twenty first century yourselves have aligned ourselves with holly a moral values ok well for this is that fear just even if it can be used to align ourselves if i go to the gym here you know international law was created to protect people ok and to avoid these kinds of things ok i mean i'll ask you the same question i mean he nato intervention i'll take the word aggression out if you want intervention here the the a mission creep that we've seen over the last few months can that create a viable libya that is sovereign and not dependent upon outside forces like the countries that make up nato particularly the united states. that nato can't just say would you like. to see we do have a un go ahead jim go ahead jim what what you will have in libya if nato

succeed to half succeed is a nato peace and it will be that kind of conditional peace it will not be a peace arrived by the libyan people because nato will have presented itself to nato nato encompasses something like between seventy five and eighty eighty percent of military spending the three nato powers in charge of this invention are the three biggest military spenders all three of the four we know you know this result and there's a really big there in disarray as it is and you're in surround as a result of that employees like their military force shall be the decisive factor that is their overriding interest so that they can intervene in the arab spring for example so that the libyan people will not do what the gyptian an alternation a civilian did which is the sort that was incoherent by then is all you have to know your ambition of being worse than the america you're not even looking at what you have on yourself the whole your moral values and support people that want freedom you know would you have allowed them to go to being massacred just because

you know didn't you know you mentioned to people and i'd like i'd like to ask mark question i mean intervention the international criminal court's indictments doesn't that undermine what the opposition the rebels the rebels are supposed to do because now they do sweep back and say well let nato take care of it for us ok then they also become puppets of an outside forces that why not for you know that is a theoretical question it's a fair question omar what do you think about that. you know first of all you know why are you set why are we saying that nato is intervening or conduct and aggression in libya they have received their mandate by the un resolution nineteen seventy three i mean by that i've let me just remind you let me remind you of an event that took place in two thousand and eight putin of russia went into georgia and tried to save the georgians and the russians that live in

georgia i guess what did you go anywhere and got a mind it received a mandate from the u.n. to go in and save lives under the previous that under the pretext or the reality of protecting human rights and that's exactly what happened there and and it wasn't an aggression against georgia so it's a totally different sort of analysis totally different analysis doesn't apply to be very different so i won't work on this you know i mean it's about. the whole thing it's about our mission creep nineteenth resolution one nine hundred seventy three said one thing and we have something completely different now that is the point jim what do you think about what the for the proposing to do is that no fly zone to everyone here entertaining boots on the ground that's a big difference jim go ahead if if the if the head of the world's dominant military superpower and two. dominant members of nato declare that their intention is that the government of that country shoulder change

that's the that's the issue and if they do it by violence without suppose you've got people to solve the issue that's an issue for. the folks on the street because we're only a month away from or four months away from it so let's not try to tear into because it will happen three four decades ago we all know it's all documented and these people want to try and they came out to protest they were massacred they were massacred there's been massacres in libya. why don't you want to hear what i saw when i was going to libya you know he was almost entirely and. then we saw today and we're going to put it up in the massacres. in the south of tripoli though unless of course. so you said back in february march where was the massacre you said don't know much about it well you know i'm talking about under good to have been in tripoli to be massacred. in massacres in tripoli on lone protester were shocked when you when he runs during this you've been very very well known for what do you what do you refer to who referred the second we refer to the second week of

the year of the protests when they reach tripoli and went over the bridge of harlem to the center of this thousands of protests was solid and they were shot at and in areas and for sure. there is the result of being too there is that my friends there been people have been massacred and you want to try and call them later and so it's a question you will say that it's later this intervening is all right gentlemen gentlemen let's not dwell too much on this here omar i'd like to ask you this here because it's have a broader context you know if we look we are old if we look at the world today jim we want to see it would be mourning the death of thousands and thousands of people as we mourn the death of people in rwanda i don't want to have the more cautious hope that you don't want to have the new approach to the well i think mido saying yes go ahead jewish nation has a lot on each conscience to if we go back to kosovo and we got afghanistan's ok go ahead does god you're saying i'm not a nasa sign the study is saying because some people were shot in tripoli although this wasn't publicized i take his word for it some people were shot in tripoli in

february some people were shot on that basis nato the mighty the sole power block in the world can then proceed to launch a war of eleven thousand missions including four and a half thousand strike missions because it declares the resolution protect all not bases why i cannot nato intervened anywhere in a little you any time has any government should anybody go threats or kill people in but i was a threat to kill people and others it was imminent it was imminent people who were out of the universe in which i watched time and they were wasting too much time i know mark leave the last word on margaret's last word of this program go ahead. first of all jim i'm sorry to tell you that you have absolutely no credibility in your argument whatsoever the whole entire world says this on all networks from c.n.n. to as a zero to b b c two some parts of russian t.v. the libyan people deserve to be helped and they were saved to hell and that's

that's the bottom line so to say that that you know they do doesn't doesn't have any legal right to go in and help the libyan people from being massacred by the libyan regime just makes absolutely right on that knowing general and i'm sure we all have the welfare of the libyan people at stake here many thanks my guest today in london and in los angeles and thanks to our viewers for watching us here are to see you next time and remember prost talk to.